Not quite as gloomy as they look

The contours of a peace deal are clear. But who has the courage to
draw them?

BACK in the autumn of last year, Ehud
Olmert, then Israel’s fading prime minister, and Mahmoud Abbas, the
Palestinians’ more durable president, were astonishingly close to a
peace deal. Judging by an interview with Mr Olmert published in NEWSWEEK in June, after he had given up his post,
they appeared to have been only a whisker apart—though Mr Abbas has
since called the gap “wide”. But it is worth spelling out what Mr Olmert
says he offered, in an account that other senior Palestinians have
pretty much verified. For it starkly shows what both sides need to do to
clinch the deal—and how feasible it is.

According to the report, Mr Olmert offered the Palestinians nearly
94% of the West Bank as the basis of their would-be state, plus land
swaps of Israeli territory to make up the difference, amounting to
nearly 6%, plus a safe-passage road-corridor to link Gaza with the West
Bank.

Mr Olmert is said to have also offered to internationalise the
sovereignty of the “holy basin” of Jerusalem—principally, the Western
(“Wailing”) Wall, which is sacred to Jews, and the al-Aqsa mosque (the
Dome on the Rock) above it that is revered by Muslims. The city of
Jerusalem, by implication, would be shared as a capital of both states,
with the Palestinian one on the east side, the Israeli one on the west.